Not only is there a big article in today's New York Post about "your number", but it features 20 Times a Lady and me as the expert (I'm an expert on all things 'slut' now), AND is on the cover of the Pulse section. Yippie! Thank you Marina! Here's a scan so you can see how cool it is:
And here's the article. I bolded my parts. ;)
YOUR LAYS ARE NUMBERED
5, PURE; 10, YOU'RE PARIS? THE FUNNY MATH OF N.Y. SEX
By MARINA VATAJ
October 24, 2006 -- TO a woman, size does matter. But it's not the size you're thinking of. What women really care about is the length of the list of former lovers, which is usually either too many or too, too many. No matter how sexually liberated (or liberally sexual), most women believe that the number of guys they've had sex with (the average being somewhere between 7.2 and 10.5, depending on the survey) really does count.
According to Karyn Bosnak, author of "20 Times a Lady" (HarperCollins, $13.95) - a novel about a 29-year-old singleton who vows to cap her lovers at 20 since it's almost double the average - when it comes to men, it's all about the number.
"Women are very conscious of the number of sexual partners they've had," says Bosnak, 32. "And even though it's ridiculous to worry about increasing your number, that's exactly what happens."
Take Jessica, a 23-year-old who's had sex with five guys - that's five fewer than the average woman - and is already thinking about stopping while she's safe, so she won't be sorry.
"I'm at a point where I feel I have to seriously consider before having sex with the next guy I'm interested in, because he's just going to up my number if he's not the one."
The apropos number of partners changes depending on which survey you check out. The Durex condom company states that the average number of partners for women is 10.5, while a survey conducted by physorg.com says the average is more like 7.2.
Bosnak, who researched the topic for her novel, found that women like Jessica think their short list should be shorter partly because the woman with longer lists tend to lie about her numbers.
"The average number of sexual partners women have in a lifetime is more like 15, especially since this is the liberal, live-single-longer New York, and the ones who say otherwise are deflating the figure," Bosnak says.
Essentially, these women tally their number of partners based on who's left once they've applied all the self-deluding excuses they've created to make themselves feel they haven't crossed some mental line.
That's the case with Samantha, 28. "The last two guys I had sex with don't actually count because both of them went under a minute and I didn't get anything out of it. The one prior to that I slept with when I was drunk and in college, and that gets erased because of the rule, 'What happens in college, stays in college.' "
Despite her low number, Samantha, like most women, believes that the maximum partners a woman can have before turning from a complete girl-next-door to the whore-next-door is 20.
Andrea, 28, practices the same funny math. "I've had nine sexual partners, but I tell my boyfriend that I've only had three," she says. "I don't count some of them since they only happened once, and why should I risk him telling him and having him think I'm easy when I can tell him otherwise?"
Whether it is the pressure of friends or just the old-fashioned idea that men think that their mate should be pure, women care less about pushing the boundaries and more about pushing men away if it means one less digit.
"It's completely ridiculous, but it's totally true," Bosnak says. "To some, a number is the difference between being dubbed skanky Paris Hilton and being considered a respectable woman."
So what does this say for ladies looking for love - but having sex on the way there?
"As long as women continue to lie about how many men they had sex with, the appropriate number will always be low when really it should be whatever it happens to be," Bosnak says.
EXCUSES NOT TO ADD HIM TO 'THE NUMBER'
- If he yells out another woman's name
- If one or both of you ends up gently weeping
- If he might be gay
- If he took you out for a vegan meal first
- If you're drunk, or you could have been drunk had you been drinking
- If you just gave up smoking
- If you just gave up having meaningless one-night stands
- If it's Tuesday
- If he's small
- If he's small-minded
- If he's Jared Leto
© 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
